Barker-Vormawor, US, $8 Million Fraud, Abu Trica, News Africa Ghana
Lawyer for Abu Trica, Oliver Barker-Vormawor, has claimed that United States authorities are alleging his client defrauded victims of more than $8 million largely because he declined to disclose the identities of individuals who provided certain bank accounts linked to the investigation.
According to him, this refusal led investigators to attribute the full transaction history of those accounts to his client.
In a detailed post shared on X on March 29, 2026, Barker-Vormawor argued that the widely circulated headline figure is not based on “evidence-based” transactions directly connected to Abu Trica, but rather on assumptions drawn from activity on accounts his client allegedly sourced at the request of an undercover FBI agent.
He explained that the allegation stems from a statement by the United States Department of Justice, which accused Abu Trica of defrauding elderly victims of more than $8 million.
However, Barker-Vormawor noted that when the matter was presented to Ghanaian prosecutors, it was broken into nine counts whose combined value amounts to about “seven-point-something million dollars” — a discrepancy he says raises questions about the original figure.
He maintained that even this reduced amount is not supported by direct evidence linking his client to the funds.
Instead, he said investigators relied on the historical transaction volumes of certain US-based bank accounts. The accounts, he stressed, are registered in the names of American individuals and are not owned or controlled by Abu Trica.
According to the lawyer, his client was asked by an undercover FBI agent to help source bank accounts for transactions. After providing one account that was later flagged as problematic, Abu Trica allegedly obtained a second account through another individual and handed it over.
Barker-Vormawor argued that authorities subsequently reviewed the total inflows and outflows across the accounts over several years and treated the cumulative sums — said to exceed $8 million — as proceeds of fraud attributable to his client.
He further claimed investigators indicated that failure by Abu Trica to identify the individuals who supplied the accounts would result in him being held responsible for the entire volume of funds that passed through them.
“The US is saying that when they go through the history of these accounts over the years, the total transactions in them are over $8 million.
So therefore, if Abu won’t mention the names of the people who gave him the accounts, they will say Abu Trica scammed people of $8 million,” Barker-Vormawor wrote.
The lawyer also pointed to what he described as the only charge backed by evidence, involving an amount of GH¢50,000, which he said supports his claim that the verifiable figure in the case is far lower than the millions being publicly cited.
He further questioned the inclusion of projected or hypothetical sums discussed during conversations with the undercover agent, arguing that figures relating to possible future transactions were added to the alleged total despite not representing completed transfers.
Barker-Vormawor said the defence is still awaiting key documentation, including bank statements that would allow independent verification of the transactions cited by investigators. Without such evidence, he insists, the prosecution’s claims remain unproven.
He also disclosed that a separate suit has been filed against the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) over its public description of Abu Trica as a “notorious fraudster,” arguing that such statements risk prejudicing the ongoing case.
